I’ve had enough of the Jungle and head to the exit. The last man I speak to is an Afghan who runs one of the restaurants on ‘main street’. He’s trying to convince me to come in on my way out, but I have to get back to Calais to catch my train to Paris. ‘You are too smiley to be French’ he teases, and when I say I’m from Australia he begins chattering away excitedly. He knows someone on Manus Island, and he has a lot of questions of the non-rhetorical kind.

My heart sinks to my feet and I want to run and hide and vomit. I thought about the possibility of this happening when I left for Athens, but assured myself the numbers were so large the chance of it occurring was miniscule. There are over a million refugees entering Europe this year alone, and only a few thousand that have tried to get to Australia, what are the chances? Yet here I am, literally about to escape the jungle myself when it happens. It’s all very well and good to have long debates about this with volunteers and workers in cafes after a shit day, but I don’t want to stand here and explain my country’s wicked policy to this man who has nothing and knows someone who is directly suffering from it. Why didn’t I say I was a Kiwi. I seriously consider feigning ignorance and just telling him about my neighbour who came from Afghanistan in the 80s and loves Australia and says he’s never had any problems. But I’ve clearly stood there like a mute idiot for too long because he can tell I know what he’s asking about.

Yes, it’s true they can’t leave I say. Yes, it’s true that PNG is not processing their claims even though they’ve been submitted. Yes, it’s true that the Australian government funds the whole thing. Yes, the navy does physically tow them out to sea. Yes, it’s true that people have died, some because they were denied medical care. He tells me his friend said the food was inedible and the guards beat them, then gestures to his restaurant and laughs, ‘at least we make good food!’. Thankfully there are some questions I genuinely don’t have a firm answer to, like if it’s as dirty as the Jungle, or if people have access to better services. Though all reports would suggest the answers to those questions are yes and no, I’m not lying when I say I haven’t seen it. Thank Christ. I’ve been struggling enough with the Jungle in France, I don’t think my soul could handle Australian supported gulags.

The man thanks me earnestly and I’m very confused as to why. ‘You explain me, here is not the worst’ he says. And I realise I’ve given him a gift. The gift that somewhere on a pacific island in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by real jungle, there are people who are treated even more poorly than him. People who are worse off and less human. People who also live in the mud and swamp but are imprisoned. This man, at least, has his agency. He can walk out the door if he wants. What a way to help someone. Maybe I’ll go and find Mimi and tell her about the Somali woman we allowed to be raped, denied immediate emergency health care to, and then flew around the pacific like a ping pong ball so she couldn’t access the courts.

When I get to the exit near the Banksy the mood in the camp has quickly turned and suddenly 7 police vans screech around the corner, riot police pour out and sprint to the other side of the Jungle. There are yells and the police have their batons raised as they run. People shrink into their restaurants and tents and huts and everything goes weirdly quiet. I try and find out what’s going on, but the response I get seems to suggest that this is a relatively regular occurrence; it could be something as simple as an argument that triggers such a reaction.

I can’t wait to get away from this place. A cop stops me and asks if I’ve been taking photos and I lie and say I don’t have a camera. I don’t know why I lie; there are no photos of police on my phone or anything that is controversial. I just don’t want to do what he wants. It’s the only ‘piss off’ I can give them. As I walk onto the freeway to hitch a ride back to Calais I pull down my hoodie even though it’s raining and cold. I’m scared that unless people see my blonde hair and white skin, no one will stop to help me.

There are teenage boys everywhere. I’m told a story of 13 and 14 yr old brothers who travelled from Kurdistan. They were with their 21 year old brother who managed to get to England two months ago. Now they have no one and have attached themselves to a male volunteer who doesn’t look much older than 21 himself. A child’s right to education is in the International Bill of Human Rights, the Refugee Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It’s also French and British national law. But the children here do not go to school. Instead they sit here every day in the dirt, sometimes kicking a football around, dreaming of England. If they weren’t traumatised and destroyed before they got here, they certainly will be once they leave.

To counter this, l’auberge des migrants has set up a women’s centre and safe space for kids and their mums to come. Because the teenage boys kept drifting in they also set up a caravan across the road for adolescent males where they can hang out, talk to other guys, and when I see them, breakdance. I meet one British woman called Alice who has started a community centre with her own money and serves 400 hot meals a day. She recently burned through her savings and had to start a crowd funding page. I can’t hide my horror when she tells me she sleeps here. I would not be in this place alone after dark. Every week she allows a Narcotics Anonymous meeting to take place in what is essentially her bedroom. She tells me that opium and heroin are big problems here, and they are trying to give people some support. I guess it’s no surprise that in such a place people turn to drugs, but it’s incredible the amount that is smuggled in here. I’m told that most of it comes from England. More people profiting from refugees misery.

There are several pregnant women. Mimi from Eritrea is 8.5 months along. She lives in one of the huts built by l’auberge des migrants, a small shack where thin wooden boards are nailed together, but better than a flimsy tent. It’s amazing how tidy she keeps it, all shoes are left outside and inside feels very comfortable, kind of like a blanket fort you’d make as a kid. Thanks to l’auberge des migrants there are no longer any women with kids living in tents, they have all been built one of these makeshift cabins that have pitiful looking padlocks on the door. It’s not much, but it’s a space to call their own. Mimi invites us in and offers us tea and food, and tells me how two and a half months ago her husband left and is now in England. She is desperate to get there. I cannot hide the outrage on my face as she tells us they don’t talk on the phone because it is too hard for him to hear about the Jungle. We sit in her tiny room in the dark and the helplessness in her face as she pleads with us to find her a way to Britain is painful. I try and convince her to stay in France and claim asylum here, but she is not interested. Many refugees tell me they fear the French will be unwelcoming and are more likely to be racist than the British. I am not so sure about this. They also worry about how long it will take to learn the language, though considering some have been in the Jungle for a year this seems misguided. Mimi tells me she is expecting to give birth here. On the floor of her shack, unless of course she goes into labour outside in the mud. I open my mouth to reassure her that there’s no way the authorities would let her have a baby here and someone will get her to a hospital, but I stop. I’m not so sure about anything anymore.

I meet two more of Mimi’s friends, also alone and from Eritrea, one of them is also 7.5 months pregnant. I am so surprised by how strongly they are opposed to seeking asylum in France. They treat me with suspicion for even suggesting it and one of them shuts down and just doesn’t want to talk anymore. It’s amazing to me that they have such a rose coloured view of how life will be in England. I don’t get how they can think that having to learn French or go through the asylum process here would be worse than living in this breeding ground of misery. Another thing I’m noticing is that people are less open. In Greece and the Balkans everyone wanted to talk, but in the Jungle residents are so used to journalists coming and asking about their history. At first people were hopeful that telling their stories would result in governments actually doing something, but it has been so long now that they see no point in sharing their pain. They’ve lost all faith that anyone will help.

I say goodbye to Mimi and her friends. Though her little home did offer some shelter from the hideous weather outside, it was beginning to get a bit awkward with me sitting there and no one talking. Almost immediately I regret the decision. There is depression and horror everywhere. Anytime a car pulls up refugees crowd around asking for food or clothes or blankets and are yelled at to keep in line. It resembles cattle being herded. Sometimes the nervousness becomes aggressive, though I don’t see anyone get physical. People are much more desperate here than further south. It’s also a lot colder and no one seems to be looking forward to the future. One man pulls me over and asks where I’m from. He then gets excited and pulls out his phone to tell me his nephew is in Melbourne, and have I met him? And can I help him to get there? I wouldn’t have thought I’d be telling anyone the better option to anything was to stay in the Jungle, but if Manus is anything like this and people are locked in…. Maybe there’s always a worse place, I just wish it wasn’t run by my government.

There is a huge police presence. Saturday was pretty calm, but I’m told that the cops regularly come in here with tear gas, even using it on women and children. Police brutality seems to be a big problem and adds to everyone’s anxiety; the refugees, workers and volunteers. I know it’s naive to think of police as protectors, but here they are regarded by everyone as the aggressors. Complaints have been made to the local station but are dismissed; one guy tells me he was laughed out when he went in to protest about them using tear gas on children. Around the corner from the jungle are a dozen vans full of riot police, just in case. Just in case of what I’m not sure. Certainly not what police are supposed to do. I hear of three different murders that have taken place, and a few cases of sexual assault, none of which have been thoroughly investigated by the police. Why bother, these people aren’t really human and resources are obviously better spent gassing them into submissive terror.

When I got back into town I was in a bit of a daze. I went and got a hot chocolate to fix everything and the very cheery woman who made me the most amazing one ever asked me if I was ok. But I didn’t want to tell her what was wrong in case she turned out to be a racist Front National loon and I’d be obligated to hate her and couldn’t come back for another chocolat tomorrow. There are posters everywhere of the candidates for the Sunday election, and I am pleased to see that most of the Le Pen ones have been defaced. Calais has a weird feel to it. When you’re in the centre you would have no idea that the Jungle was only 4kms away. There are Christmas decorations and music everywhere, and I wonder how many locals have actually visited the camp and know what it’s really like. When you mention the place to anyone you get a mixture of sympathetic tuts and distasteful expressions. The owner of my hotel was not impressed when I asked him for directions. Certainly people did not on the whole react in a similar manner to what I heard in Greece or the Balkans, though given the sheer scope of the Jungle situation perhaps that’s an unfair comparison.

I don’t think I’m going to write very well tonight because I am in a bit of shock. It’s very rare that I’m lost for words, but the Jungle is the worst place I’ve ever been. I thought long and hard before committing to that statement, because it’s a big call- and it seems sensationalist. I thought about Soweto and Kibera townships in South Africa and Kenya, the slums I saw in Cambodia, the poor village where I lived in Tanzania, the dire conditions in some of the camps on Lesbos, the chaos in Presevo, the poverty in Addis Ababa, the desperation in Palestine. But I can’t think of anywhere I’ve seen that is worse for the human spirit than the Jungle in Calais. I can’t think of anywhere else I’ve been that was so on edge and sad and without any joy. It is a home you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy. A place devoid of hope.

And it’s in France. An hour and a half train ride from where I live. A G7 country, one of the richest in the world, one that prides itself on its observance of human rights, it’s amazing health care and social system, one whose motto is liberte, egalite, fraternite. This makes the place seem even more brutal. It’s more shocking to see babies living in tents in the mud when you know that the resources are there to fix the problem, there’s just not the political will. Civil action forced the government to put in some portable toilets and fund the Jules Ferry Centre where women and children are able to sleep and everyone gets at least one hot meal a day. There are showers, but the queue is 4 hours long, and after nightfall men are locked out. This means that several women and children sleep in the Jungle because they don’t want to leave their husbands and fathers.

Unquestionably, one of the reasons this place is so dreadful is the fact that people here are stuck. While 10 000 could pass through Macedonia in a day, everyone was on the move, heading to somewhere better, a new life and brighter horizons. People were tired and hungry and stressed and dirty and anxious, but they were hopeful, they believed that in a few days or weeks things would be better. In the Jungle, everyone is in a limbo that resembles hell. Each night men still try and jump vehicles to the UK, even though it has become virtually impossible. As long as one person occasionally makes it, people here will not stop trying. The odds are so stacked against them it’s incredible they don’t give up and try to find another path, but the majority of them have friends and family in Britain, communities where they will feel like they belong to something again. So they keep waiting and trying while the months and the years go by and they languish.

And the numbers continue to rise and the sense of misery increases. There are people here from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Libya, Palestine, Sudan, Kurdistan, Nigeria and others. Putting that many different languages, cultures, religions and nationalities on top of each other in such a small space, with no infrastructure or resources is bound to be problematic. Violence between and within groups often occurs, there is competition over handouts, and tent cities are segregated. All things considered it’s actually amazing that there aren’t more problems. When you walk down the Jungle’s ‘main street’ there is an abundance of pop up restaurants, such as Cafe Kabul which appears to be the best stocked establishment. There are churches and mosques. There are grocery shops and businesses. There is a book store. One thing that would make a huge difference to everyone is internet access, but organising that seems to be difficult. This seems incredulous to me. If Greece, Macedonia and Serbia can arrange for refugees to charge their phones and go online surely France can.

A few days ago the Daily Mail, Britain’s answer to the Tele, published an article that made it look like refugees were living it up and quite comfortable in this ‘tent city’. I really doubt that any regular reader of the Mail would walk in here. The first thing that struck me about the camp was its sheer size, in space and numbers. At the moment estimates have the population at around 4500, but a few months ago I’m told it was closer to 7000. Tents sprawl in every direction and have sunk into the wet ground. The temperature is not that low, but the rain and the wind cut through my jacket and jumper. There is mud everywhere. And not just wet dirt, the kind of mud that you sink into and traps your feet and cakes on all the way up to your knees. Disease is rampant. One volunteer told me that 80% of the population has scabies, and because they don’t have easy access to showers, hygiene standards are appalling.

There are fences and barbed wire everywhere. On the train from Paris I felt like shrinking in my seat at the site of how many steel walls cordoned off the Eurotunnel. On the hill next to the camp high fences block the roads so refugees cannot get to the trucks that board the ferry. All I can think of when I see these barriers is Israel and the Occupied West Bank and how horrible a feeling it was to be behind similar walls in Bethlehem. Even though in Calais the fence isn’t technically trapping them, it’s a constant reminder that these people are not really free to move. The increasing number of walls being built on this continent has been touted by many as evidence of Europe’s failure. I think its evidence more of humanity’s failure.

On my way in I chat to an elderly French volunteer who comes to the jungle and knits with the women and children three times a week. She loves the children she tells me, and laughs while recounting how the police have searched her many times and only ever found wool and knitting needles. She is horrified that conditions like this exist in France, and when I ask about the election tomorrow she is distraught at the idea of Le Pen, but admits she couldn’t bring herself to vote for Sarcozy now that the socialists have pulled out. She then hangs her head in shame while telling me it was the left who allowed the Jungle to descend into its current state and she has lost all faith with the government.We come across a group of men from Iraq who are leaving the camp as we go in and she embraces them and asks about their families. They call her Mama and one tells her he has just been granted asylum and is going to Lot. She cannot contain her joy that his family will be somewhere safe and hugs him fiercely. When the men find out I’m Australian they all want to know about the island detention centres, and if it’s true that there people are not even allowed to walk out of ‘their jungles’ . Amazingly, I’d never made this direct comparison. I shudder to think what a jungle would look like where people are not allowed to leave. These guys may have nowhere to go, but at least they are not locked in.

I meet a Sudanese guy as I sludge through the mud. He tells me how he fled Sudan in September and has been in the Jungle for three months. He travelled through Egypt and Libya, took a boat to Sicily and then came through Italy and France. His English is soft and polite and near perfect. He has a wife and two children in a province near Darfur and he is hoping to bring them to the UK ‘once he gets there’. He has tried every night for 10 weeks and been caught, beaten and sent back over and over. ‘Do you think it will get easier?’ he asks me hopefully, ‘Do you think that maybe they will open the border and let us in?’
I’m asked this question at least a dozen times through the course of the day by people who are hoping I will tell them what they want to hear. After what some of them have been through it’s incredible to me that they have any belief left at all. The man looks devastated when I tell him I only think the UK is going to get harder and harder to get into, and I feel as though I’ve personally let him down. But despite his crestfallen face he still shakes my hand and thanks me earnestly before walking off with his friends.

I generally don’t tend to head north at this time of year, at most times of year for that matter, and thankfully for my vitamin d levels in less than two weeks I’ll be on a beach in Sydney and temperatures in single digits will seem like a distant memory. But right now I’m on a train heading to northern France, where the forecast is predicted to be rain, cold and wind, three things that I hate. And I’m heading to a place that is so unappealing its been nicknamed ‘La Jungle’.

The Jungle actually refers to several squatter camps that have sprung up around the northern French town of Calais, where the Eurostar tunnel takes travellers across the channel to England. While refugees have gathered here for years trying to jump trucks, trains, cars or ferries to get to the UK, in the past year numbers have substantially increased and there are now thousands of people. Some have lost their lives in attempts to get to Britain, many have been injured by trying or from police brutality, one man managed to walk the length of the Eurotunnel before being apprehended by police at the other end. Many do not speak French, some have family in Britain, and others simply think they have a better chance at a life there than in Europe, but generally refugees stay here for a long time. While some have managed to get to England, most languish in tents in the mud. Conditions are atrocious, and by all accounts the camps resemble townships. In what appears to be a pattern I’ve seen everywhere from Lesvos to Skopje, governments do not want to acknowledge the full extent of this problem and provide the infrastructure and humanitarian services so desperately needed through fear of giving the situation any element of permanency and losing votes.

Such an approach has failed. Coinciding with my weekend is the second round of the French regional elections, where Marine Le Pen, France’s terrifying duplicate of Pauline Hanson or Donald Trump, is poised to win the first region ever for her far right-wing party the Front National. What is amazing to me is how many people in the previously socialist north seem to be voting for Le Pen as a protest vote. Though as someone who comes from a country that elected a buffoon because a politician changed her mind about a carbon price that the majority of the world is now advocating, this probably shouldn’t be such a surprise. I guess I had more faith in the intelligence of the French, and hopefully they end up proving that faith justified. If not however, and Le Pen wins and takes control of a region, she has promised to do whatever it takes to get the ‘migrants’ out of Calais, and one can only fear to what extent that means she is willing to go.

I’ve spent a lot of time since starting this project obsessing over how governments and people can be so dismissive of refugee’s human rights. Rights that we are all internationally recognised to possess for no other reason than the fact that we are human. You’re not entitled to them because you’re white, rich, male, Christian, straight or born in the west. You’re entitled to them because you are a human being. And it’s dawned on me that the reason some can be comfortable with this is because for many these people are not considered human. While it’s easy to argue that refugees are different, the ‘other’, or even a threat, such arguments don’t justify denying them human rights. It’s harder to get your head around the fact that for so many they are just not people, and this allows us to treat them accordingly. It’s the type of thinking that allows Israel to dismiss war crime accusations for the indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian civilians. It’s the type of thinking that allows the majority of the Australian population to not even blink while the government locks up desperate innocent people on remote pacific islands and denies them the most basic of fundamental freedoms. And it’s this type of thinking that allows France to treat the people in the jungle as an inconvenience rather than people screaming out for help and dignity.

But, however much we may choose to ignore it, these people are human beings. Believing otherwise may make it easier for you, but it doesn’t make it any less of a fact. They are the same species as you and your children. They catch the same diseases. Their bodies function in the same way. They have the same physical, civil and social needs. They could be your kidney, blood or bone marrow donors. A brilliant Banksy that popped up today emphasised the reality that this could be any of us. If you believe that you are entitled to human rights, and most people do, you cannot simultaneously support the deprivation of them for someone else because they are poorer, darker or less fortunate than you.

It’s now been almost a month since I left Serbia and in some ways the world is a different place, particularly my world. There are more military personnel in Paris then I care to see in the city I live, I’ve been patted down before walking into a big store, it takes an absurd amount of time to get into the building at work, and for several weeks any noise on the metro made people jump. Travelling with the refugees through the Balkans gave me a unique perspective after the attacks happened. When Macedonia announced it wouldn’t let through anyone who wasn’t from Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan, I was relieved that ‘my friends‘ had got through when they did. When US governors and a certain presidential candidate started calling for a halt on any humanitarian intake from Syria I was filled with a rage more violent than it would have been 6 weeks ago. And as each country along the way started to build a fence, I wanted to be there to see what it would look like and how it would feel now, with a very physical barrier to increase the terror, isolation and loneliness these people are already dealing with. To increase the sense that no one wants them.

Many people asked me why I didn’t take more photos, or even video footage. It’s important to remember that these people are refugees, which by definition means that they are fleeing persecution, and most likely do not want their identity to be revealed to authorities back home before they have found safety and a durable solution. In Syria there have even been stories of Assad’s government identifying individuals on social media and raiding their property, or worse, punishing loved ones they have left behind. To add to this, many journalists operating in the field have acted unethically in the taking of photos, particularly of children. I witnessed myself on Lesvos questionable media practices. It goes without saying that permission should always be sought before a photo is taken, and from parents if the subject is a minor. But even in these cases a personal judgement must be made as to whether this is the right thing to do. While photos have played a powerful role in this crisis, they can do so without the exploitation of grief, the invasion of privacy or putting refugees and their families at risk.

Thank you all again for your support, so many people responded to my call for clothes and put me in contact with people they knew who have helped at the Jungle. Many have asked me about visiting themselves. The following pages contain very useful information on the situation in Calais and how you can help;http://www.calaidipedia.co.uk/https://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com

This video is 1.37 long.
Watch it and tell me at what point she’s any different from your daughter/little sister/niece/ cousin/child of your friend?

Is it somewhere in between dancing for the camera or spinning in her pink tutu?

Is it before or after kissing her baby sister or asking her dad to take her to ‘clever kids’ school?

Does the purple jumper and butterfly headband make you feel uncomfortable? Did you see the same on a child in the park the other day?

Watch it and tell me how she’s any different to what you were at 5, except that you weren’t having bombs dropped on your house.

And then tell me how we don’t have room/ can’t afford to help children like her and her parents. While we spend 55 million sending 4 people to Cambodia.
And millions more on offshore concentration camps on remote pacific islands.

Tell me how Australia is in trouble with people struggling to afford second cars and two story house mortgages and designer shoes.

Assure me that somehow this little girl really is different and maybe her parents will threaten us and our way of life.

Tell me how it’s not our responsibility to make sure she gets an education or proper health care, or a childhood.

Or better yet, look in the mirror and tell yourself that, and decide if you like what you see looking back at you.

It seemed like no one on my bus to Belgrade spoke English, but I picked up that the word refugee is not used much by the Serbians, ‘they’ are all ‘immigrants’,*said in an angry voice*, showing the power of language in labeling someone as undeserving. And it’s clear that as in Australia, many Europeans don’t believe refugees have a right to be here.

I am an immigrant. I left my wealthy, stable, safe country to live and work in another because I wanted to experience something different. I had no well-founded fear of persecution, I could have found a better paid and more secure job in Australia than I found here. But no one in Europe has ever questioned my right to be here. No one has ever accused me of taking someone else’s job. And as far as I know, no one has ever worried that I might be a threat to national security.

Every single refugee I spoke to loved their home. Every single one of them spoke of the beauty of their country and said they would go back if they had a future there. We are wired to want to return to where we are from. Every Christmas I go home, because it gets to November and I’m itching to be where I’m from again. For these people, going home is not an option.

I was sitting in my hotel in Belgrade when news of the terrorist attacks in Paris came through, and like everyone who calls that city home I felt sick to my stomach, and wracked with nerves until one by one everyone there who I loved turned out to be ok. There’s really nothing more terrifying than the thought of not feeling safe where you live, and the French have had a taste of that in the last few days. The difference is that for the majority of refugees, they do not have a government who will act to protect them, who will do whatever it takes to ensure their future safety. For some of them, it is the government targeting them. They are not running from an attack on a stadium, or a nightclub, or a restaurant, or a bar. Their villages, cities, and in some cases their countries, are on fire.

We all empathise with the images coming out of France that show people terrified and fleeing. We can all understand that when you hear gun shots and comprehend the threat, you grab the people you love and you run. You run away from the danger, and you keep running until you find protection and feel secure. Refugees don’t get to just run out of the restaurant; they have to run further and faster and for longer until they feel safe. Why is it that we don’t look at the images of people running from war and make that correlation? There was not one story of someone slamming their door in the face of Parisians who ran on Friday. Why can we not #PorteOuverte now?

While I’ll acknowledge that I met some who weren’t running from obvious persecution, the idea that these people are to be feared is something that I understand less now than I did two weeks ago. That the man or woman who comes from a different background is someone you are justified in being afraid of because they are different to you makes no sense. We make these people the other because it allows us to feel safe in our bigotry and more comfortable in our ignorance. Obviously I didn’t talk to every refugee, but these people don’t want to blow up your homes and change your way of life. They don’t want to convert Europe or threaten your children. They don’t want to impose some deranged form of Sharia law. What they want is the same things you do. They want to send their kids to school, finish their own education, get a job, and be able to feed their families. They want to be free and to live without fear.

Almost immediately following the attacks in Paris, Poland announced that it would no longer be adhering to its commitment to accept a mediocre number of Syrian refugees under a previously negotiated EU deal. Hungary is likely to follow. Calls in the US and Australia to halt any intake were loud. As if the two issues were automatically linked. Despite the fact that the vast majority of these perpetrators were European citizens, born and bred here, in our schools, our suburbs and our communities.

What I’m afraid of now is what’s to come. How we will react as a community. If Paris will permanently feel like a city under military protection. If France will feel like a country at war. I’m afraid that people will become more racist. I’m afraid that Marine Le Pen will win the next election. I’m afraid Muslims will no longer feel safe on the streets. I’m afraid that hate speech will become something we accept, stand by and allow to happen.

I take the official and ordered crossing from FYROM into Serbia at Miratovac and reach the processing centre at Presevo. This camp is the most chaotic that I’ve witnessed. There are people everywhere yelling, and a heavier police and military presence than I’ve seen before. As this is an entry point, people here are registered and fingerprinted and this takes time. On an average day- 8 hours, on a bad day- 24. After arriving from the border groups are barricaded and held back behind metal rails in numbers of 50 or so. It really looks like something out of a war film. From here they move up the line group by group until they enter the UNHCR tents where they are processed, finger printed, and then board a train or bus to Sid at the Croatian border.

Adis from the United Presevo Volunteers comes out to meet me at the entrance where I’ve had another encounter with a displeased policeman. I’m not going to be allowed into the official tents. I hopefully and helpfully tell the cop that I’m Australian, but this one doesn’t seem to care.
Adis has been in Presevo for a month now. There are about 25 volunteers living in a house, literally crammed into the rafters sleeping on top of each other. These people are phenomenal. Unlike on Lesbos, there is no glamour and prestige in Presevo, there are no pretty beaches and waterside restaurants, and these guys are doing it tough. They work 18 hours days, and from what I can tell, they’re the only reason the situation hasn’t completely spiraled out of control. Before entering the camp it is this group who are handing out water and food and clothes and basic medical care to the refugees who may be here for hours and hours before they are processed. MSF also have a tent to deal with the most serious cases, but policemen often refuse to let people out of the line, even to use the toilet. As a result children defecate in their pants. When groups move forward to be registered people are anxious, and there’s a high risk of babies and children being trampled. I see for myself Adis throw himself into one such movement and act as a human shield to stop a little girl being flattened. The Presevo volunteers work entirely off donations and are desperately in need, with funding left for only a few more days, so if you can spare it- $50 goes a very long way in Serbia.

Volunteers also provide essential information to people who often have no idea what’s going on. Some refugees think that they are in Slovenia and not far from ‘Mama Merkel’. Others arrive having no idea which country they’re in. Something that makes a huge difference is basic communication, so the volunteers have made info sheets explaining where they are and what happens next. It seems incredulous that this hasn’t been done by the state or large NGOs. It’s such a basic and obvious thing to keep people informed, and the times I’ve seen refugees stress is when they don’t understand what’s going on. It would be a simple gesture, as well as an act of basic decency and a sign of respect to acknowledge these people as humans who deserve the courtesy of knowing what’s going to happen to them. It’s also pragmatic and would make everyone’s lives a lot easier.

The volunteers are all young, I don’t see anyone who looks over 40, many are in-between studies or jobs, some have left work to come here. All of them look exhausted and stressed. I ask them about their biggest problems, which seems a stupid question when the whole place is chaos. They tell me how the medic tent is only able to handle priorities, and there are so many problems that priority has come to mean being 8.5 months pregnant and having contractions. If you don’t fit that description, you’re waiting a while. Young men show up with injuries sustained from the boat trip from Turkey, having walked through Greece with serious wounds, but single males are never the priority.

Another huge issue is psychological care. Children often have panic attacks, particularly when they are separated from their parents. I hear one story of a 16 year old diabetic who was refusing to take insulin and effectively killing herself slowly. Another of two teenage girls who fled Syria and had all their belongings stolen in Hungary, one had started cutting herself. A woman died in a hotel room because they switched off the water and she couldn’t take her heart medication. They found her reaching for the pills. A bottle of water is all that would have made the difference. When stocks are low, water is only distributed to ‘special cases’- drinking water– a decision actually has to be made for who stays dehydrated.

The volunteer house is set less than 50m back from the street where the refugees are barricaded. The background noise of people in distress is loud and constant, and I don’t understand how they are getting any sleep at all. One tells me that she sleeps with a walkie talkie next to her ear in case of an emergency, meaning she never sleeps at all. Everyone has nightmares about the screams that sometimes come from the street and mean that something is really very wrong. I am so humbled by these people and their dedication. I could not live how they are living and the difference that they are making is enormous. Recently, Adis started cooking for everyone, but some days there is only enough money for them to have one hot meal. Because they want to be clear that general donations go to the refugees, you can donate specifically to their kitchen.

Something I’ve heard consistently since leaving Greece is stories of the authority’s brutality. While the military generally have a better understanding, policemen are not trained to deal with these kinds of situations. There is no understanding of cross-cultural communication, and it shows. People are shouted at like animals and pointed at like criminals. I see one man pushed to the ground and others dealt with very roughly for daring to take a step forward. But I’m also told stories of compassion, that the cops here are protective of the volunteers, and very, very concerned about the babies. But still there is no order in Presevo. Attempts to separate women and children from men to protect them in the crowds don’t work because wives obviously want to stay with their husbands. And when the crowd surges it’s the most vulnerable who are at risk of being trampled. The power of a group of people of this size heaving with exasperation and aggravation is quite frightening.

As with everything I’ve seen in the last week, there are many stories of humanity at its best. Some of the refugees have helped with crowd control, a Syrian social worker intervened in one tense situation and told Adis, ‘I got your back’. At one particularly busy point a group of kids aged 7-10 helped with running the food distribution tent, excited to be given a role and responsibility, and just something to do other than wait. A Spanish NGO called Clowns Without Borders showed up one day and started entertaining the children, but it ended up having just as positive an effect on the state of mind of the police. One story that gives me chills is of a day where supplies ran out and there was nothing left to give. People were getting anxious when Adis, feeling powerless, started playing music on a whim, and almost immediately the situation calmed. Everyone, including the police, started singing. A moment of normalcy in an otherwise appalling situation prevented disaster. On another occasion when they were linking arms to try and hold a crowd back, a group of Moroccan guys started singing ‘We are the world’. Sometimes all it takes is a song, an act that reminds everyone we are all the same, and a part of something bigger than ourselves.

I was warned that getting into the Macedonian camps would be impossible, but I managed to walk into Tabanovste with no problems. A dirty train has just pulled up and people empty off it for the usual routine of collecting clothes and food before they walk along the tracks to cross. Eventually, despite my best efforts, some genius figures out that I am not a real refugee and I’m quickly ushered out. The camp director is not impressed that I have infiltrated his kingdom. They are terrified of journalists getting in and don’t believe that I’m not with an organisation. Arbnor asks for my passport, and as soon as he sees the coat of arms his attitude does a complete 180, ‘Kangaroo!’. Suddenly it’s very important that we become Facebook friends because he wants to come to Australia, and it’s very hard to get in he tells me. Oh what sweet irony.

I’m offered tea and an interview. ‘I’m so sorry, I thought you were British or American.’ he chuckles, as if this explains everything. It’s not the first time that my nationality has worked in my favor like this and I take full advantage, though I’m not sure what I’m going to do when he finds me on facebook and asks for an Australian visa. The camp is calm he says because the refugees do not stay very long. FYROM has managed to implement systems to funnel people through the country as quickly as possible and refugees rarely stop. Serbia is only 500 metres away, and 3-5000 people cross here daily. Maximum capacity for overnight is 1000, though it is very difficult to imagine that many people in this space and in reality they end up sleeping outside in the dirt. Arbnor seems proud of his camp, as if it is a competition with others to see who can provide the best service. But he admits that if something happens and people were to stay longer, they would be in trouble.

Everything is fine as long as the borders stay open and people can move on. It is easy to see how quickly this could turn into a full sale disaster if that changes though; basic infrastructure is lacking, and the only thing that allows the system to do anything resembling work is the constant onward movement. Many commentators have predicted that border closures further north could have catastrophic effects on the region which already suffers from its own ethnic and religious tensions.

The taxi drivers of Macedonia seem like a bit of a mafia, and it’s amazing how much money is being made. Refugees have injected millions into the economy through transport, small goods, and even accommodation for the wealthier ones. Crossing the state is at least 100 euro per car, and drivers make the trip three times a day, in a country where the average income is not much more than 300Eu a month. All the drivers I interact with are incredibly sympathetic. ‘We do what we can’ I see them buy water and coffee for the refugees. They hide children in their cars from the police and get angry when discussing how the authorities are corrupt and take money from these poor people. As Vladmir who drove me into Skopje and used to serve In the Yugoslav army points out, Europe’s last refuge crisis was a result of war in the Balkans, and people genuinely seem to want to help. ‘You are 18, 19, still really a child, and you wake up and your life is gone… things you can see, you can never unsee.’ They set up their phones as hot spots so the refugees can contact home, and they provide hugely important information on where they are going and what to expect that I haven’t seen given anywhere else so far. Perhaps most significantly, they treat the refugees as equals and talk to them about their families and their stories. There is no class structure in these cars.

Until June this year Macedonian law actually imprisoned taxis for taking irregular entrants to the Serbian border. Several are currently serving gaol terms for this offence. I hear one story of a driver who picked up a German girl and her black boyfriend, and felt sick about it but asked to see their papers. Vladmir looks ashamed to be telling me this, but says he couldn’t risk a gaol sentence and felt he didn’t have any choice. Understandably the couple were furious and walked away.

He encourages one group to seek asylum in Macedonia. Proving that a huge problem in this situation is a lack of communication, the refugees reveal that they don’t know about procedures here and are heading to countries where they believe they will get papers easily. They are also concerned with being in large countries where there are Arab-speaking communities. A fact that would have the far right screaming with cries of ghetto, it is really just a desire to feel a part of a community. To speak your mother tongue, to laugh and talk with those who share your history. It is no different from Chinatown or Little Italy. It is no different from me being drawn to an Aussie in Paris. None of them want to accept charity. When those who are used to money find out how much people in Macedonia earn they are quickly turned off, and encourage the taxi driver to come with them to Germany.

It is true that a small number of these people are not only running from bombs, one group crossed through the other day from Puerto Rico, another from the Dominican Republic, which seems amazing to me because surely there is an easier way to get to Europe from the Americas than via Greece by Turkish smugglers. My Yugoslav army friend says that there are those taking advantage of the situation. He doesn’t hold it against them though, and seems very wise in his comments that it is human nature to always search for a better life. As long as the refuges keep moving and injecting millions into the FYROM economy I really don’t think that anyone here minds. However, I am given the distinct impression though that benevolence would quickly disappear if all these people stopped moving and decided to settle in Skopje.

Last night under the cloak of my Medecine du Monde contingent I visited the Idomeni camp on the Greek-FYROM border. It’s purely a transit camp, and on any given day 10 000 people pass through. The camp is confronting in its sadness and its normalcy. The doctors tent has a waiting room that short of a few copies of Women’s Weekly could be the same as any other medical centre. People sit in line to see the medic, parents try to calm their crying kids and control the naughty ones, and everyone looks bored and restless. Outside there is a group of teenage boys seeing who can clear a railing the most easily by leap frogging. One doesn’t make it and is teased mercilessly. People are trying to connect to the wifi and find somewhere to charge their phones. Other than the overarching sense of waiting and expectation, other than the dirt and the tents and the smell, this could be anywhere. Every now and then a volunteer yells out ‘Farsi and English!’ or ‘Urdu!’ and without fail someone puts up their hand and comes forward to translate.

The only thing that really makes this scene different is the sense of anxiety and nervousness about when it will be their turn to cross. Groups arrive in large buses and are given a ticket, and when their number is called they are allowed to walk into FYROM. The timing depends on the authorities at the other side letting them through. Every 5 mins someone asks me what number they are up to, people are frantic they will miss their turn and be stuck. The really bizarre thing is that there’s no check or control on the numbers, and yet nobody pushes in. Everyone is waiting their turn. The refugees are anxious and frustrated, but incredibly polite; every time I tell them that I don’t know and they just have to wait they thank me profusely.

UNHCR is trying desperately to make sure groups stick together. A problem has been families becoming separated and it is easy to see why. The camp is dark and there are hundreds of people everywhere. People are curled up in corners and fall asleep in the dirt. I chat to a logistics officer from MSF, Antonis, who is very proud with how much his English has improved in the past month since he started working at the camp. Like all of Greece he has family in Melbourne and is excited that I’m Australian. He tells me how his grandparents were refugees and we have to help these people. The kindness in his voice when he responds to the same questions over and over again shows much more patience then I could muster. I think of the video footage of Australian staff at detention centres that was leaked and I cringe. Maybe part of our problem is that we’ve always just had it so good people really believe hardship is not being able to afford a second car. Australians can say things like send them back and ‘stop the boats’ while Antonis can say ‘we know what they have seen’.

Fatima and Ahmoud are a young Kurdish couple who left Syria a month ago. When I ask if they were afraid of the government or ISIS or the rebels Ahmoud waves his hand dismissively and says ‘that kill that and that kill that and they kill me’. So many threats exist that discussing who is responsible has become irrelevant. They have a two month old baby, and for this reason Ahmoud paid 2300 pp to travel to Greece in a new boat. He responds to many of my questions with ‘because I have a baby’, and tells me he saved money for two years and sold his house and all their jewellery to afford the ticket. They spent 20 days in Turkey where they were harassed by the police and the army. Ahmoud tells me that he didn’t sleep for almost three weeks because he had to stay awake and guard their family to make sure his wife and daughter were safe. Eventually a smuggler picked them up from Istanbul and they drove for 9 hours in the dark to Izmir. Crying, terrified, they were put on the boat for Greece. They are heading to Sweden where Ahmoud’s older brother is. His hopes for the future are simple, he wants his daughter to be able to go to school, and he wants to have a life.

I ask them about their wedding and Ahmoud tells me that they couldn’t have a real party because of the war. He seems incredibly protective of Fatima and doesn’t let go of her the whole time we talk. He grows bashful as he explains he wanted to marry her when they first met, but it took him two years to work up the courage. Fatima doesn’t speak any English, but seems to understand this as she looks at me and rolls her eyes. Ahmoud was a chef in a French restaurant in Syria, but he is nervous about finding a job in Europe because he cannot work with pork and is worried this will stop someone from hiring him. I ask if they want to have more kids and he says yes, but only one, he is firm that two is enough. I ask if they would ever go back to Syria and his face contorts into a pained expression. He says that he wants his daughter to see his home, ‘but right now it is too empty’.

Being white the refugees think I am working there and assume that I know what is going on. One man comes up and asks for my help connecting to the wifi. He is trying to reach his family in Afghanistan to tell them that he has arrived safely with his son. This is like the blind leading the blind and all I manage to do is run his battery down while trying to find the setting on his phone. A little girl has no socks or shoes and here I am slightly more helpful in finding something for her feet. People are consistently asking for blankets and tonight for some reason there aren’t any, but they are offered extra warm clothing before they cross over. One woman from Nigeria asks me for a carton, she has three babies with her and doesn’t want to put them on the cold floor.

The scene is incredibly multicultural. I meet people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Eritrea. My new friend Antonis tells me that yesterday they had a group from the Dominican Republic pass through. I walk with one group to the border and it is the strangest feeling. I’ve crossed many borders on foot, but this crossing, in the dark and with authorities herding everyone through like cattle, feels like something out of an apocalypse film.

Crossing on the FYROM side of the border

Despite suggestions that I disguise myself as a refugee and sneak across the border illegally I choose not to do that, although an interesting idea I’m not quite keen on spending a night in a Macedonian jail. So this morning I went to the official crossing and then travelled back to the unofficial one on the FYROM side. My Greek taxi driver and the hotel owner were quite concerned that I did not have a visa. I assured them that I am Australian and this is no problem. They asked me if I checked and I lie and tell them of course I have, only a stupid idiot who has never travelled before wouldn’t check if they needed a visa to go into a new country. Luckily I turned out to be right, but for a few seconds I had a slight fear of being turned back to where I came from. It’s not a nice feeling even if in my situation it only would have been a minor inconvenience.

The border between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

At the train station in Gevgelja there are buses and taxis everywhere. The refugees cross and those without lots of children take a taxi while large families wait for a train. Drivers don’t charge for young children, but this means they are reluctant to take more than one in a car load. And the police will fine them if they are caught with too many people. I manage to walk past the first line of security without being noticed and cross the tracks trying to look as not-blonde and fair as possible, but have to turn around. My choice to do things officially turned out to be a wise one because almost immediately I was racially profiled by the police and had my passport checked. Macedonia has been doing everything to stop people accessing the camps and they are not impressed with my presence. Without official accreditation, which I don’t have, or official permission from the police, which I couldn’t get, you are not supposed to be there. I explain that I am just trying to get a taxi and want to go to Serbia and they calm down once they see my passport is stamped. But my place is clear, ‘these buses are not for you, here is Syrian people, normal peoples bus is over there’.

Nationality is not something you think about that much when you have a ‘good one’. The whole concept of being a refugee revolves around a lack of protection from the state, something that people in the west generally don’t have to worry about. Nationality can be a source of pride and a source of shame, for me it has definitely been both. The only other Australian I met on Lesbos was a woman who emigrated there twenty years ago. And volunteers and aid workers alike were all very surprised to learn where I was from. We really do have the most atrocious international reputation concerning this issue, and I would like to see Dutton or Turnbull try and justify it to the mayor of Sykemia or Molyvos, or the mayor of Lesbos who has consistently reiterated that it makes no difference where these people come from, we are all human. These people haven’t done anything wrong, and one day, that could be us.

Nationality also plays a role amongst the refugees. I was ignorant of the tension between Syrians and those who come from further east. Because they are more likely to be wealthy, the Syrians can pay for private taxis and buses rather than wait for the state supplied transport, thus they reach the processing centres and eventually their final destination more quickly. The Afghans have capitalised on this and sell Syrians who arrive after them their fingerprint documentation. I was surprised to learn of such entrepreneurship. Being in less of a rush allows people from Afghanistan the time to go through the processing, and after they no longer need the paper work (to board ferries), they sell it to Syrians who want to speed up crossing the orders. This gives the Afghans money and buys the Syrians time. The Afghans then have to line up at the next border while the Syrians pass through. Every time the authorities think they have come up with a full proof way to control the situation, within days the refugees have outsmarted them and found a way around it. You just can’t control population movements on this scale.

I speak to an aid worker from Swiss organisation Medecine du Monde who tells me about his PHD in post-2011 migration from Libya. When the conflict began tens of thousands of Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan and Pakistani workers, mostly domestic and labour, were left stranded with no help from their governments. On the contrary, China hired a Greek ferry, a Malta airport and evacuated 32 000 of its citizens within a week. The difference between a government that cares and a government that doesn’t is a matter of life and death.

From the Greek Islands and Athens the refugees head north by bus to the border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). The camp on the Greek side where I am now is north of Thessaloniki and called Idomeni. Depending on numbers refugees can spend anywhere from 20 minutes to 6 hours waiting to cross. It is a separate border to the official crossing, and I have been told I won’t be allowed to cross over with them tomorrow but will have to travel further along to the regulated border. So determined are the authorities to distinguish between ‘us’ and ‘them’ that we can’t even cross the same frontier in the same place. Police ensure that people cross in groups of 50, and the refugees walk along the rail line into FYROM. Here the authorities are pragmatic and everything is very regulated. As far as FYROM is concerned, these people do not really exist and it is just about creating a corridor to get them out as quickly as possible. After crossing they are charged 25 EU for a train to the Serbian border. There is one train every 3 hours and the largest holds 1500 people. As long as the borders further north stay open everything is calm. But aid workers fear what will happen if Austria, Slovenia, Croatia or Serbia decide to close their borders. Earlier this year Hungary made just that decision and panic made the system unmanageable. Another factor out of everyone’s control is the weather. The last week has seen temperatures above 20C and sunny days, but when it rains and the temperature drops people get sick. They may have to walk in the cold for hours and will often present with hypothermia and other health problems that make an otherwise composed situation tense.

The overall atmosphere is always one of onward movement. Stopping is not an option- these people do not want to stop, and nobody wants them to stop ‘here’. Its fine if they decide to stop in Serbia or Germany or Sweden, or if they had stopped in Turkey. But no one wants them to be their problem. My Medecine du Monde guide is another open border advocate; I’ve been surprised by how many I’ve met. He makes a lot of sense. Whenever there is an announcement about one of the countries along the route closing the borders, panic is rampant and there is a spike in numbers. It is this sense of urgency induced by governments flexing their muscles that potentially renders the situation out of control. He maintains that this is not a humanitarian crisis, it’s a political crisis. A statement validated by EU paralysis in coming to an agreement on how to deal with the situation. The humanitarian disaster could be solved by very quick decisions; more permanent infrastructure, better facilities, correct information on processing and procedures. But governments don’t want that. Governments want to maintain the allure and facade of border protection and a temporary problem, which is rubbish given the fact that many of these people are running from protracted situations. Above all people here advocate for a ‘ferry first’ approach. A large boat crosses from Turkey to Lesbos every day, but the refugees cannot get on it despite the fact that it is almost empty. There is no understanding such a prohibition when people then chose to get on rickety boats and risk their lives anyway. Until the government and the EU do something about that it is hard to imagine anyone taking their attempts at compassionate rhetoric seriously.

This idea of thinking beyond the nation state challenges usual perceptions of refugees vs economic migrants, though the line between these two is often so blurred it is hard to make judgments that one is more deserving than the other. Economic migrants by definition have something to offer our societies. Although they may be seen as less worthy, in practice they are less of a drain on countries’ economies, particularly countries within the EU, Australia, Japan, Korea, which all have aging populations and will depend upon migration for their future survival. The 1951 Convention that determines status and who is entitled to refugee protection was drafted in response to a very particular context after WW2, that resembles nothing like the current global situation. The drafters had in mind Jewish elite academics forced to flee the holocaust, not Syrian families running from war. But valid fears exist that any attempts at redrafting the Convention will result in more rather than less restrictions on who is offered protection. Categorising people who need to flee just seems so pointless. The world is shaking just as much as it was in 1945, it’s just that it’s not shaking in our backyard anymore.

While nationality may divide us still, it is heart-warming to see the number of refugees who have formed groups in their travels, showing the natural human desire to always be part of a collective. No man is an island, and none of us want to journey alone. And the biggest collective of all is humanity. Jamal, the man who quit his job to live a life of volunteering told me how he was walking up to a camp one day when he was called into the bushes by three cheeky young unaccompanied Afghan boys who were eating food distributed by emergency staff around a fire they had lit to keep warm. They motioned for him to join them and shared their sandwiches, without knowing when their next meal would be. They also then tried to give him their lighter as a present. The gift of food and the gift of warmth, from three boys who had consistently not had access to either. I’m going to use Jamal’s words because I can’t put it any better. “This is why we survive; this is why humanity will endure whatever evil has to throw at it. It’s because of our capacity to share in the most extreme of circumstances.” Regardless of what symbol we have on the front of our passports.

41.12249322.510477

Share this:

Like this:

What’s this?

Forever intrepid gypsy at heart. Lover of pasta, the ocean, yoga and red wine. Believer in human rights, international law and justice. Can't sing, spell or cook. Terrified of snakes and diets. Views are my own.